NOVANEWS
Thomas Jefferson believed that the most effective means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny were to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of as many facts as possible, in order to defeat the enemies of freedom.
Dr Ron Paul talked about Thomas Jefferson, and his emphasis on educating the people in order to preserve the Union.
Thomas Jefferson said: “An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all of its citizens.”
Jefferson believed that there was no safer depositary of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves, and if they were “not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
This was because he believed that “every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.”
Thomas Jefferson believed that the most effective means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny were to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of as many facts as possible, in order to defeat the enemies of freedom.
In one of his most pointed quotes, Jefferson said that “if a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was, and never will be.”
He believed that no nation was permitted to live in ignorance with impunity, and that “light and liberty go together.”
He also believed that the study of science was invaluable, wherein its “value to a republican people, the security it gives to liberty by enlightening the minds of its citizens, the protection it affords against foreign power, the virtue it inculcates, the just emulation of the distinction it confers on nations foremost in it; in short, it has its identification with power, morals, order and happiness.”
